Tallow drafted the parley’s terms on the Chamber board in the hour before dawn, because a parley without terms was only a conversation, and conversations were how the Hold had been robbed before.
He had the board clear in front of him, the great slate that hung on the Hall’s north wall and that the Chamber used for its figures. He had chalked the Keystone’s reach across it in a double ring, three leagues on the inner circle and the marsh’s edge beyond, and he had marked the Ruined Bridge on the Lessary Road with a small square stroke. The stroke sat just inside the inner ring. He had checked it twice. He had checked it once by the Keystone’s own reach, from the Undercroft’s north stone with the cord that Harrow kept for the Mason’s Yard, and once by his own paces from the posterngate, counting every step under his breath and writing the number on the back of his hand, because his pencil had broken on the first stair.
The two numbers agreed to within a quarter of a league. He said so to the empty Hall, in a low voice, and then he said that it was a miracle, and that the miracle was the marsh’s fault, because the marsh had never once in its history lain flat enough to be measured.
